The present invention is related to the field of computer user interfaces, in particular a user interface for viewing related documents.
The growth of the Internet, and in particular, the facet of the Internet known as the World-Wide-Web (referred to simply as the Web) has been very explosive. The Web provides a means for making multi-media styled documents over the Internet. These documents are termed Web pages (hereinafter pages). Pages may refer to and provide access to other pages on the Web. Each page has associated with it an identifier termed a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A page is accessed by specifying it""s URL. The contents of a page is specified in a document formatting language known as the Hyper-Text Mark-Up Language (HTML). A reference to another page on the Web is termed a link. Links may be specified in either absolute or relative terms. A link specified in absolute terms refers to it""s entire URL. A link specified in relative terms assumes a certain portion of the URL is the same as the existing page. The specification is thus relative to the URL of the page on which it is defined.
To access and view a document on the Web, a Web browser is needed. A Web browser provides search, traversal and viewing functions needed to access documents on the Web. Various Web browsers exist for the Web, e.g. NetScape from NetScape, Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. or Mariner from Network Computing Devices Corporation of Mountain View, Calif. Traversing through documents contained on the Web is similar to following a path through a network. Since each page may contain links to many other pages, traversing through the pages is a simple matter of following the links. Most Web browsers provide controls for going backwards and forwards in the list of links. They also maintain a history list of the links to enable jumping directly to a specific previously viewed page.
Most publicly available Web browsers only display one page at a time. The user interface for Web Browsers typically correspond to the capabilities of the computer system on which it resides. A full featured Web browser may provide rendering means for viewing audio, video and graphical portions of documents as well as a graphical user interface for controlling access to documents. The graphical user interface is typically one which provides for vertical and horizontal scrolling via scroll bars and point and click manipulation of a cursor control device to invoke browser operations (e.g. to traverse links). Color, underlining or reverse video are techniques used to indicate the existence of a link on a page.
A more robust Web Browser is described in xe2x80x9cDeckscape: An Experimental Web Browserxe2x80x9d, Marc H. Brown and Robert A. Shillner, DEC Systems Research Center Report 135a, Mar. 1, 1995. The DeckScape web browser utilizes the metaphor of a deck as a collection of Web pages. Only one Web page on a deck is visible at one time, although multiple decks may be visible. DeckScape is also multi-threaded so that each deck may be xe2x80x9cactivexe2x80x9d, e.g. downloading pages, at the same time. A deck may be created based on a traversal through the Web or as the result of an operation such as xe2x80x9cexpand all the links on this page.xe2x80x9d
The present invention uses a book metaphor to enable a user to browse through a list of web pages. The use of a book metaphor on computer based systems is known in the art. Such a book metaphor has been used as an aid for organizing related files and/or applications. Examples include the TabWorks product available from X-Soft, a division of the Xerox Corporation of Palo Alto, Calif., and the SGI DemoBook available on graphical workstations from Silicon Graphics, Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. The metaphor of a notebook is also used in pen based systems (e.g. the PenPoint Operating systems from the Go Corporation) and personal digital assistants (e.g. the Magic Link product from Sony Corporation).
A display system for displaying lists of linked documents is disclosed. The present invention is implemented for displaying lists of pages downloaded from the World Wide Web. A list of pages will typically be related in some way. For example, the list of pages may include all the pages defined as relative links on a home page. A home page is typically an entry point for gaining information on a particular person, product, company ,etc., and the relative links are relative to the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address of the home page.
The list of pages is displayed in a book metaphor, termed a WebBook, on a computer controlled display system. The book metaphor is desirable since it inherently conveys the notion of the pages being related. When displayed, two active pages are displayed at one time. To enable the book metaphor, each page in the list is converted into a page object. Each page object will represent either an left or right page. Page objects representing a left page will have an axis of rotation along a right edge (as viewed by a user) while page representing a right page will have an axis of rotation along a left edge (as viewed by a user). When positioned on the WebBook, the position of the axis of rotation is generally the same as the spine of the WebBook.
The turning of pages in the present invention is animated. The animation sequence for turning or ruffling pages is generally the same. Ruffling can be thought of as multiple concurrent page turns. Generally, the sequence of steps is to rotate the page to be turned about the axis of rotation, rotate the page on the other side of the page to be turned about the axis of rotation, at a point orthogonal to the viewer, turn off the page to be turned and turn on the page on the other side, turn off the page being covered, and turn on the new page being revealed by the page turn.
Various user interface controls are provided for traversing the pages of the book, creating book marks, scanning pages, scaling the contents of a page, scrolling through pages, etc.